The narrative surrounding yesterday’s news story reporting on the Family & Childcare Trust’s new research showing that annual childcare costs are higher for most families than mortgage costs terrify me.
Because mothers ‘are forced,’ so the scary story goes, to ‘stay at home’ they ‘add nothing’ to the economy and might in fact – Horror – claim ‘welfare benefits’ instead!
Why does this frighten me so much? it’s simple, I’m terrified by the unquestioning belief that the only value these mothers (and, by implication, any of us) can yield is in working, earning, and paying taxes.
In fact, I can think of No value to society greater than that given by mothers (parents) bringing up children.
In case I sound like a glib government exhortation to ‘get back to basics,’ let me clarify: in my opinion, value comes in all shapes and sizes. within a family it’s quite normal for different members to bring different value to the party.
Rather more so in an organisation, with its diverse workstreams, divisions, and resource flows.
How much more so, then, in that complex multi-layered organism we call society!
Sure, value of one sort Can (sometimes) be expressed in disparate ways – we can ask how much a staff team costs, or even (perhaps) how much a forest adds to gdp.
A more mature, and more credible approach – however – would be to recognise the different sorts of value added by different individuals, groups, and other elements within a community.
It would be a poor society, I think, which includes only investment bankers, or only rivers and forests, or only loving and nurturing parents.
It would be a terrifying society, I fear, that only values economic worth, ignoring the nurture families give or the sheer delight musicians bring us.
That’s why i’m frightened not by the research, nor by the reporting of it, but by the narrative surrounding the reporting of the research.
Unimaginative stories scare me.
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